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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Geneva, New York » Plant Genetic Resources Unit (PGRU) » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #394416
Research Project: Development of Biotic and Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Apple Rootstocks

Location: Plant Genetic Resources Unit (PGRU)

Title: Virus studies in the Geneva® apple rootstock breeding program

Author
item Fazio, Gennaro
item BETTONI, JEAN CARLOS - New Zealand Institute Of Plant & Food Research
item CARVALHO COSTA, LARISSA - Animal And Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)
item HURTADO-GONZALES, OSCAR - Animal And Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)
item AL RWAHNIH, MAHER - University Of California, Davis
item STEINBERGER, ABRAHAM - Oak Ridge Institute For Science And Education (ORISE)
item NEDROW, ABBY - Cornell University
item Volk, Gayle
item ADAMS, STUART - Willow Drive Nursery
item ADAMS, RICHARD - Willow Drive Nursery
item ROBINSON, TERENCE - Cornell University

Submitted to: New York State Fruit Quarterly
Publication Type: Trade Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/15/2022
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: NA

Technical Abstract: Viruses that infect apple trees are the cause of losses in apple production mostly associated to tree decline and death, graft union incompatibility, decreased tree growth, deformation of branches and roots, and by making fruit unmarketable. Virus research in the Geneva® apple rootstock breeding program has taken many forms throughout the years including nursery trials in 2003 comparing G.16 and other advanced apple rootstocks grafted with the same scion cultivar infected with viruses or cleaned, the testing of 50 rootstocks in the Hudson Valley Lab and at Virginia Tech planted in 2012 to identify sensitivity to ToRSV, and other field trials throughout the U.S. that featured scion-wood loaded with diverse virus types. More recently, incidents of decline of G.935 rootstock when grafted with certain strains of ‘Delicious’ and ‘Honeycrisp’ cultivars urged the need to develop experiments that would reveal the viral causes of this decline and their genetic components in apple rootstocks in order to identify other rootstocks in the breeding program which may suffer similar problems. Furthermore, as the breeding program releases additional rootstocks for industry use, it needs to make sure that the material distributed is free of viral agents that may compromise the industry, therefore experiments aimed at the detection and elimination of apple viruses have been conducted. In this article we describe some of these experiments and the results obtained so far.